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Facebook to Buy Giphy for $400M

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Re: Facebook to Buy Giphy for $400M

#181

Post by cosmie »

nerdponx wrote: post #143
cosmie wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Read the privacy policy[1]. Think of Giphy images as a giant, organically shared version of web tracking software. Which complements the coverage of the FB Pixel[2] well, as it worms its way into privacy-conscious areas they might not have FB Pixel coverage such as private communications and security/privacy-minded apps. And without implementing something like a proxy server to pre-cache/sanitize images and strip tra…

proxy server to pre-cache/sanitize images and strip tracking identifiers in both directions Developing such a tool might be valuable for privacy-conscious application developers.

Google already does it with Gmail[1][2], so it's not unheard of. But it adds another layer of complexity, plus is somewhat antithetical to the privacy viewpoint as it then exposes all of the images to the app developer now since it's routed through the proxy server instead of direct end-user -> image server requests.

[1] Can't find a page specifically detailing it, but [2] gives a basic synopsis on it in the context of allowing GSuite admins to whitelist internal domains from routing through the proxy.

[2] https://support.google.com/a/answer/3299041?hl=en

Re: Facebook to Buy Giphy for $400M

#182

Post by Nextgrid »

Dangeranger wrote: post #178
Nextgrid wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the main problem is not movie studios (where fair use is likely to apply as we're talking about a 10-second GIF out of a 1h+ movie) but all the meme creators on Reddit and other social networks. I assume those make up the majority of GIFs out there and as of now they aren't being compensated or even credited properly.

This is an unpopular opinion, but if the meme creator violated copyright when they made the meme, and they want credit for their “derived version” then they need a license.

I disagree that they violated copyright. If they're using a screenshot or a short clip from a movie that is definitely fair use. On the other hand, what Giphy is doing is copying the entire meme.

Re: Facebook to Buy Giphy for $400M

#183

Post by teddyh »

Freak_NL wrote: post #138
yreg wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd just like this trend of sending reaction gifs to end. People keep posting them in Slack all the time, but I find it about as appropriate as that brief time when all my uni teachers decided that it's hip to include rage comic faces into every other slide of every presentation. , yes I know, I'm fun at parties…

I can't grok this trend at all. All these replies in the form of memes make me feel like I'm in the Darmok episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. I'm grateful communication on MatterMost at my company has not seen the need for reaction gifs emerge; the wildest thing we have is a custom emoji of a dancing banana.

“Grok” is actually a cultural reference; it is a made-up word from a very famous science fiction book.

When people use it, it looks the same to me like if they were using “Live long and prosper” in casual conversation.

Re: Facebook to Buy Giphy for $400M

#184

Post by 101404 »

dumbfounder wrote: post #44

Congrats to Giphy, but honestly it baffles me they are worth this much money. Do they actually bring in decent revenue, or was this all about eyeballs? Is this content even decently monetizable? Disclaimer: I am the jaded creator of Twicsy, a Twitter picture engine with many millions of visitors over its lifetime, and I apparently missed the boat on this trends and had to shut it down.

It's all about collecting user data and usage data. Not about serving images.

Re: Facebook to Buy Giphy for $400M

#186

Post by lucideer »

loceng wrote: post #154
lucideer wrote: post #60

The Giphy integration that Facebook put into WhatsApp lets Giphy track who sends what GIFs to whom, so while the message is transmitted encrypted, a lot of context can be gleaned. This acquisition makes a lot of sense.

Certainly they can't claim that communication is private and/or encrypted then?

They can, as it is end-to-end encrypted; the ends are always the most likely points of leakage. In this case, it's the sender's end.

This is part of the beauty of e2e encryption because you have reasonable access to the "ends". For unencrypted traffic you have no access to the "in transit" part so no knowledge about potential compromise. Since you're relatively confident with e2e that the message can't be read in transit, you only need to check the parts of the transaction you have access to.

In this case, we can check the sender's end by looking at what external entities are accessed (network & API requests from the client). For WhatsApp, there's a total of three I'm aware of:

1. The OS keyboard API. This theoretically means Apple or Google can read everything you type (but not necessarily messages you receive).

2. The Giphy search API for retrieving a list of GIFs to choose from (notable as this means Giphy also gets metadata about your thought process in choosing a GIF, even if you never send one).

3. The HTTP request to Giphy to retrieve the chosen GIF (I'm not 100% sure if this is distinct from the above search request results, due to resolution differences, or if they're all one-in-the-same).

Re: Facebook to Buy Giphy for $400M

#187

Post by 867-5309 »

whalesalad wrote: post #175
jjoonathan wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do any of these services let you share your own gifs over slack? Last time I tried: dragging in gifs (or mp4s or webps) resulted in an attachment, not an inline gif, giphy wanted money to upload your own gifs, and gfycat had some kind of slow and inconsistent review process so that your gifs don't show up in search (or in the slack plugin) for weeks to months after you upload them.

Couldn’t you just... drag the gif into Slack?

> dragging in gifs ... resulted in an attachment

Re: Facebook to Buy Giphy for $400M

#188

Post by ghaff »

teddyh wrote: post #183
Freak_NL wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't grok this trend at all. All these replies in the form of memes make me feel like I'm in the Darmok episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. I'm grateful communication on MatterMost at my company has not seen the need for reaction gifs emerge; the wildest thing we have is a custom emoji of a dancing banana.

“Grok” is actually a cultural reference; it is a made-up word from a very famous science fiction book. When people use it, it looks the same to me like if they were using “Live long and prosper” in casual conversation.

I think one difference with "grok" is that, the way it's normally used, there really isn't IMO a perfect English replacement. To me at least, it implies a deeper and broader internalizing of something than saying "I understand it" or "I get it" necessarily implies.

Re: Facebook to Buy Giphy for $400M

#189

Post by slg »

teddyh wrote: post #183
Freak_NL wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't grok this trend at all. All these replies in the form of memes make me feel like I'm in the Darmok episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. I'm grateful communication on MatterMost at my company has not seen the need for reaction gifs emerge; the wildest thing we have is a custom emoji of a dancing banana.

“Grok” is actually a cultural reference; it is a made-up word from a very famous science fiction book. When people use it, it looks the same to me like if they were using “Live long and prosper” in casual conversation.

Or to put it another way, it is basically a reaction gif in word form.

Re: Facebook to Buy Giphy for $400M

#190

Post by Icathian »

wfleming wrote: post #174
Freak_NL wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't grok this trend at all. All these replies in the form of memes make me feel like I'm in the Darmok episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. I'm grateful communication on MatterMost at my company has not seen the need for reaction gifs emerge; the wildest thing we have is a custom emoji of a dancing banana.

I don't disagree, but as an aside I think the references to that Star Trek episode (which I've been seeing a lot lately) is interesting. I find it amusingly ironic that the most effective way to describe the growing tendency to communicate mainly in cultural references is... a cultural reference.

Double irony points for using a Heinlein-ism in the post too.
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